


Five Times Frank & David Were Soulmates and One Time They Weren't

by mr-finch (soubriquet)



Category: The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-30
Updated: 2018-09-27
Packaged: 2019-07-04 11:28:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 16,723
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15840339
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soubriquet/pseuds/mr-finch
Summary: Soulmate AUs because I can.1. Lieberman's soulmate timer never started. He figured it was broken, until he met Frank Castle.2. When soulmates touch each other they leave marks. Frank thinks they’re just bruises.3. Your soul mark is an image that appears on your skin when you're young. It represents the person you're destined for.4. Soulmates share each other's injuries. If David gets one more gunshot wound, he’s going to flip.5. One of the names is your soulmate. The other will betray you. Frank wishes he knew which was which.6. Everyone shines when they meet their soulmate. The stronger the feeling, the stronger they shine.





	1. Patterns

“What are you doing?"

Frank’s fingers bite into my hair, hauling me back from the desk like a scruffed cat. “Retinal scan,” I remind him.  _Asshole._

He lets me go. I lean forward, wondering, as the scanner completes its almost totally useless examination of my eye, just how long it will take Frank to stop believing in this construct.

As soon as it finishes scanning, he puts a gun to my head. Oh, it probably won’t take long. But I keep up the lie - keep it up, because knowing Frank Castle, I need this escape route to stay open in case of the very real possibility that he won’t let me go. Won’t  _understand._

I’ve watched him for almost a year now, followed him through Manhattan on screen after screen, but a grainy image is nothing like the real Frank and I had been right to put in a back door.

He believes me, this time. And then he drags me away from the desk and starts ziptieing me back to the chair. 

I shoot him an exasperated look. “Oh, are we still doing this? Come on."

Turns out exasperated looks are an invitation for a punch in Frank-speak. Nice. 

I gasp until I can breathe again while he ties my arm back to the chair, glaring through my wet hair at his goddamn boots. “You’re an idiot,” I say, as one ziptie goes around my wrist and another goes around my forearm. “You don’t know a goddamn thi-“

My timer. 

The printed numbers everyone on the planet is born with somewhere on their body. The timer that doesn’t start counting until we meet our soulmate.

Mine is on my left arm, currently sandwiched in between two zipties. And it’s counting.

I stare at it like it has grown legs and started a tapdance routine on my arm.

“But-” I shift my right hand to try and touch it to make sure, but the zipties stop me.

Frank has definitely been yelling something in the last few seconds: talking about how I’m going to learn what real pain is. He has no idea. He doesn’t have a clue what it’s like to marry someone you believe is your soulmate, only to find out they're not.

Sarah’s timer started counting the moment she first saw me. Just like that. The whole time I thought she was aloof and really, really she was just scared shitless that she had found the one so early. She had no idea what to do.

When mine never started, I figured it had some kind of fault. Not even the NSA has ever worked out how soulmate timers do their thing, so it was a legitimate guess.

Now my clock has finally started and to top it all off I’ve gone and missed it.

62:38:02 … 62:38:03 … 62:38:04

Two _days_  ago? Two whole fucking days and it took me until just now to notice? Even with my family being threatened and a couple buckets of cold water thrown in my face, god that's poor.

“Hey.” Frank grabs my face and makes me look at him. “Are you listening to me?”

62:38:07 … 62:38:08 … 62:38:09

I laugh; a high-pitched giggle. “Not a word.”

He punches me again. In the face this time. I guess I deserved that one.

As the explosion across my cheekbone morphs slowly into a gentle forest fire, I see Frank kneel down in front of me. We look at each other through the straggly remains of my wet hair until I realise he’s finally going to let me speak.

“No,” I say, wetly, and spit out a glob of blood. “I was listening. You said something about time being the worst form of torture.”

I glance at the clock on my left arm, still resolutely counting upwards. “I know something about that.”

And I tell him, the way I’ve been wanting to tell him for months, how the file ended up on my desk. How I had taken it up the chain, but not in the way I should have done. How I got shot in front of Sarah all for the sake of one heroic email. My one chance to do some good in this world.

“And now it’s all for nothing,” I say. “They don’t know I’m still alive. I can’t tell them. And best of all, now I know my timer’s not broken.”

I tilt my head towards my arm and Frank eyes follow me. I see him catch sight of the numbers, see him figure out what I mean, and then I stop looking at him. “So Frank, can you help me get my family back?"

*

In the end, I have to stab him with the syringe-pen to get myself out of the chair. Frank’s not a man of great sympathy, but he is capable of falling for routine.

I could take his gun and hold it on him as he comes round, but I can’t bring myself to be that self-seeking. If he wants to kill me, he’ll kill me. It took me twenty minutes to get him from the floor to the campbed: I’m under no illusions he won’t overpower me even half-drugged.

So I place the gun on his chest and sit down to wait. To find out if my gamble has been worth it and this guy is the answer I’ve been looking for.

I glance down at my arm, where the last two numbers of the timer are stubbornly peeking out of the sleeve of my robe. Ticking, ever onwards. Most likely Frank already has a solid answer for his soulmate, even if it wasn't Maria. 

It’s hard to believe it could have been anyone else, though. Marrying outside of your soulmate is still a pretty taboo thing to do these days. If your soulmate dies, that’s fair enough, but having two kids with your wife when only one of you has started? I had thought it was faulty back then. Now I know it wasn’t. I just had the good fortune to lead someone on for twenty years.

Frank stirs, cocking his gun and stumbling out of bed faster than I can say _wait_. He flat out ignores my warnings, so I stop telling him to sit back down and instead just meet his gaze, resting my hands on my knees.

“Time to choose, Frank. Trust me or kill me. That was the deal.”

He turns the gun to face me. I can feel my blood thudding through my veins, can even hear it pulsing. I imagine it runs along the same clock as my arm: 51 … 52 … 53 …

When your soulmate passes away, your timer changes. No one has figured out the science behind this part either. Mainly, because studying a bunch of retirees doesn’t go down well with the general public.

See, when you lose your soulmate, whether it’s to natural causes or to murder, your timer stops. It doesn’t keep going, it doesn’t disappear, it doesn’t even go backwards. It just… stops.

Then, sometimes, for some people, it starts again when they met someone new.

That’s what I want for Sarah. If I can’t be the one for her, I want her to be with someone who can give everything to her. Not someone who can’t count each second of their future together. Not someone who can’t show themselves to their own family. Not this half-life.

“Trust me or kill me,” I whisper. 

58 … 59 …

“Stop.”

I look up. Frank has propped himself against the wall, looking like he’s trying to decide between puking and passing back out.

And yet he still wears that innate determination like a uniform, that war-driven desire that keeps him going and going until the threat has gone. That’s the Frank Castle I need.

“Stop talking,” he says, and stumbles over to me. He sets one hand down heavily on the table beside me and starts rolling up the sleeve with his other in slow, sluggish movements.

He’s breathing hard and red with keeping himself upright once he has it rolled to his elbow. Like that’s the furthest he can go, he slides down until his arm is flat on the table and he’s on his knees in front of me. “Look,” he says, panting. “Look."

98:00:00

I think my heart stops for a second, because those numbers seemed to strobe in front of my eyes for a lifetime.

For once entirely without words, I pull myself away from the timer and shove my own sleeve up my arm. 98:00:03.

I look back at Frank’s timer. 98:00:04.

“We’re-“

“We saw each other,” Frank says, staring up at me. “On the roof.”

“That doesn’t make sense,” I say, unable to stop comparing them. “I saw you first. I knew where you would go.”

“No you didn’t.” Frank shakes his head, his teeth pulling back in what could be a grimace or a grin. “Not until we stared each other down.”

“Who else could it have been? On the roof in all black in the middle of the day?”

Frank closes his eyes, as if in pain - or maybe just dizzy. Then he nods at my left arm. “ _That_  didn’t know. It wasn’t sure."

I try to find an answer for that, but can’t. He’s right. Timers need a connection. A spark. Like a jumpstart. 

“You are not my goddamn soulmate."

Frank looks at me. Our clocks tick onward together, both timers shining like fluorescent lights on our skin. My blood - fuck, I can feel it in my _heart_  now - thrums like a long-lost rhythm.

“We’ll see about that,” Frank says, and tucks the gun back into his pants. With absolutely no regard to what I had said about standing, he gets halfway to his feet before he loses his battle with the sedative and slides back down onto the floor.

Dragging his ass back to the campbed, I find myself wondering if I had irritated Sarah this much when her timer first started.

Somehow, I doubt it.


	2. Handprints

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When soulmates touch each other they leave marks. Frank thinks they’re just bruises.

David realises what they are the moment he sees them: pale, purple fingermarks encircling his wrists and ankles. He’s naked and covered in cold water, but he doesn’t have to have his wits about him to know that those are soulmate marks.

He’s even more certain after Frank punches him in the ribs and a ripple of purple rises there like an ink stain. He knows for sure when Frank punches him in the face and blood isn’t the only darkness he can see spreading across his nose.

It’s impossible to hide, since all of his skin's on show, but Frank doesn’t say anything about the marks. He keeps talking about David’s connections, asking him about the NSA. Questioning him when all David wants to do is answer. 

Does he even notice?

*

It’s so dark in the woods that David can’t see a single fucking sign of the man he came to save. It takes _hours_ , tripping over tree roots, scratching up his hands. Falling on his knees in the dirt. When he finally spots Frank, curled up on his side like a beaten dog, he thinks he’s come too late.

But Frank - Frank is breathing, and his pulse skips slow and uncertain under David’s finger. He carries him - he’s not sure how he manages it - all the way back to the van, the dead weight hanging from his shoulders like a manifestation of the load he's been carrying around with him all year.

When David has hooked him up to an IV and Frank isn’t bleeding quite so badly, David trains the flashlight on him. Frank’s chest is bare - David cut the shirt off him in the end, to get around the arrow - and spread over his skin, all the way from the IV line at Frank's elbow to just under his jaw, are David’s handprints.

It’s so clear that David staggers against the door and the flashlight flickers. Then Frank moans in his sleep and some sort of sense comes back to him. David slams the back door and gets into the driver’s seat, starting the engine and peeling away.

Curtis doesn’t say anything when he sees Frank laid out on the table covered in purple marks, but David’s sure he knows. He’s a medic. He must have seen so many of them.

“Does he need blood?” David asks, trying to avoid the subject. "I’m a universal donor."

“Blood’s not the problem,” Curtis says, and gives David a long, searching look as if he’s rifling through what he finds there. “He’s septic. We have to get that arrow out of him.”

He beckons to David, who hurries forward to help him turn Frank’s solid body over. David can feel Frank’s fever burning on his hands, like he’s branding him everywhere he touches him. He meets Curtis’ eyes over Frank’s shoulders and gets the gut-watering feeling that they're thinking the same thing.

“You okay?” Curtis asks, popping a scalpel blade out of a packet with his teeth and sliding it onto the handle.

David can’t think of a world where he would be okay right now, but he nods anyway. Let him cover all of Frank’s skin if he has to. At least it will blend in with the blood and the bruises. And the hole Curtis is making.

Still, he blanches when Curtis twists a pair of forceps in there.

“Look at the state of him.” 

David glances up from his lap, where he’s been examining his hands for purple stains. He knows it doesn’t work that way - when he touches Frank, only Frank gets marked. Frank would have to hold his hands for them to change colour too.

“This is all your fault, man,” Curtis is saying, shaking his head. And yes, David knows it is. Somehow, even though they’re destined for each other, David’s the only one that has any idea and he's keeping it from him.

“Frank doesn’t know.”

“I know,” Curtis gives him another one of those serious looks and David’s stomach quails. “He would’ve told me if it happened again.”

“Again?” Of course. Maria. David has a sudden flash of the two of them together: Frank tilting his wife's head towards him and kissing her neck, making his way across her collarbone as the skin under his lips flushes purple.

“You don’t really think you’re  _that_ special, do you?” 

Curtis shakes his head when David doesn’t answer and wipes his bloody hands on a towel. “Let’s get him onto the cot.”

*

When Frank limps into the basement two weeks later and carries straight on into the bathroom, David follows him. He hasn’t seen Frank in days, except on the news, and nothing good is being said on there.

“You had something to do with blowing up a hotel, I think,” he offers, watching Frank strip his shirt in half. He’s much worse underneath. Blood, dust and- is that a piece of metal in his arm?

“You need to talk to me,” David says, moving closer to him. Frank just stares back at him and holds out his hand. “Give me the stuff.”

David sighs and sets the first aid kit down on the countertop. Up close, he can see what Frank has just put his body through. What he always puts himself through. There are slashes across his shoulder, running across the arrow wound that still hasn’t fully healed. There's a slice right _through_ the skin at his temple, just missing his skull. That barbed piece of metal looks rusty, and- oh, Frank just tears it out. “Jesus.”

“Please,” David says, feeling beyond guilty for what he's done. What he's failed to do. “Whatever happens next, let me at least stitch those holes up."

The offer is out before he really thinks about it, and when Frank doesn’t answer David even presses him to relent, until Frank finally hands him the needle and thread. There will be absolutely no hiding the marks David will make with Frank wide awake like this. With a  _mirror_ in front of him.

Pushing out a shaky breath, David takes hold of the split skin at Frank’s temple with the very tips of his fingers. There. It’s covered in blood anyway; he can’t see a thing. The needle goes in and he talks mindlessly to take Frank’s mind off both things. He gives him anecdotes about his childhood. Muses on betrayal.

When he takes Frank’s forearm to steady him, he almost drops it again. Turns out he can forget for a moment there too. Leaning in to mask his fear of being discovered, David breaks the thread with his teeth and starts a new loop in Frank’s arm, where the shard of metal bit into him. There’s blood here too and David almost relaxes, glad he took hold of the back of Frank’s arm. 

There, it goes. Easy. He can get away with touching Frank if he’s always covered in shit like this.

“In reality,” he says, more to himself than to Frank. “Nothing’s really changed.”

Frank stiffens and turns his face away, staring himself down in the mirror. “Everything’s changed.” He jerks his arm out of David’s grip and turns on the tap, running the water up his forearms to get rid of the blood. They don’t have a shower down here, so this is the best either of them can do. David just wishes he wouldn’t do it right  _now._

“Hey, hey. What do you mean?”

Frank looks at him with anger behind his eyes. “Think we’re just fine, huh?” He turns off the tap without looking and wipes his hands down his forearms. Watery blood drips onto the floor. “You betray me, I betray you?”

“I did exactly what you and I said we were going to do. I talked to Madani.” David reaches for a towel and steps forward, but Frank slaps it out of his hands.

“Get away from me.” 

Frank turns away, blood still running from his un-sewn arm and dripping from his elbows. “You? Me? This mission you think you're on? It's over, Lieberman. I’m done."

He leaves the room with David’s handprint still wrapped around his arm.

*

Frank is gasping through his own blood. He can’t breathe right, he can’t move and he’s covered in injuries that scream  _death._

David finds him like that: flat on his back next to Rawlins. He can’t believe he’s arrived in time to save him, not when Frank won’t get up. Not when he’s making noises like a drowned man on dry land. “Come on,” David says, cradling Frank’s head in his lap. “Call me an asshole. Call me a son of a bitch. Anything, Frank.”

Frank’s eyes slip shut and David lowers his head, pressing their foreheads together. “Please,” he finds himself whispering. “Please please please please _please._ ”

It would be so easy for Frank to go - that’s what he realises there, on the concrete floor - now that his mission is done and there's nothing left to keep him here. He could go where his body needs him to go, where he’ll find Maria and his kids. He could finally go and leave this all behind.

David is torn between breaking him and letting him.

He cups Frank’s face in his hands and sobs, then scrabbles to take both of Frank's hands in his because there's one thing - possibly, the only thing - left to bargain with. “Frank,” he says, “Come on. Wake up. Look at this.”

Frank is coughing. Wheezing, through the flood of his own lifeblood. His eyes flicker and blink. He won’t wake.

“Frank," David says, again. Then: "You remember when you first caught me? When you climbed out of my trunk and ziptied me to a chair?” David can’t hear anything else now. Nothing, but the gargle and dying groans of Frank Castle. “You remember how my wrists went purple?”

Is it his imagination, or can he hear a yes?

“You remember when you got shot with an arrow and I brought you back? You remember that?”

In his mind, David can still see Frank's chest with his hands painted all over it. Now, David closes his fingers over Frank's hands and rubs them, trying to stop them from going cold.

“You didn’t notice what you looked like when I stitched you up. Not then or after. But you gotta look now, Frank. You gotta look.”

Frank opens one bleary eye like it’s the hardest thing he’s ever done, and the iris is swimming in blood. David lifts his hands so gently and opens them up to him. 

Frank's fingers are soiled black and his knuckles are split, but anyone can see that his palms are a soft, creased purple. Like a sea of blood vessels. Like sunset on a frozen day. Frank doesn’t say a word for a few seconds - if he even can - he just stares at their hands, blowing out air.

“I thought- I thought-“ He speaks so softly, like he has so little left in him. David presses his forehead back against Frank's, close enough to hear anything. “Thought they were bruises.”

He struggles, trying to catch his breath, before his eyes meet David's again. 

“Soulmates,” he says.

David can’t help himself. He's so relieved that Frank can speak that he starts laughing, even if tears match it and drip down onto Frank's face. “Yeah, that’s right. That’s right, you scary beautiful man. Soulmates. So don’t you go leaving me.”

Frank closes his eyes again, but this time he looks peaceful. He huffs a soft noise and David puts his arms around him. “I got you,” David says into his ear. “I got you. You’re home."


	3. Feature

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Your soul mark is an image that appears on your skin when you're young. It represents the person you're destined for.

It’s a Big Deal, your soul mark appearing. Teenage girls gather in hallways at break, heads together, trying to figure out what theirs might be. Boys try to steal a look, in case one of the symbols means something to them. 

Frank Castle is fourteen and doesn’t give a shit.

His mark is a deep black, even though most kids’ haven’t coloured up yet and are just a grey hint of what’s to come. It’s on the underside of his wrist and as far as he can tell it’s some kind of a bug. A square-ish, black bug with tons of tiny little legs. It’s never meant anything to him.

His father laughs when he first sees it. “The fuck kind of mark is that?” He’s a large presence behind Frank’s head, staring pig-eyed at the insect just starting to come through on Frank’s arm. “Looks like a roach. You gonna marry a roach, boy?”

He laughs again and slaps Frank on the back so hard he’d be winded if he hadn’t been expecting it. Frank stares straight ahead and resists the urge to roll up his sleeve, knowing it will be worse if he does.

He’s fourteen now and he stopped taking shit from his father a year ago. Now Frank crashes on sofas and avoids the apartment block with the yard full of broken beer bottles. He knows it’s not a roach. Roaches aren’t square.

*

“Maybe it’s a diamond,” says a guy in his unit who later becomes his best friend, when they’re lying on their bunks during rec. “You ever turned it around that way? Maybe it’s not supposed to look square.”

Frank shakes his head and smiles. Billy Russo has a big ornate mirror on his thigh and Frank thinks that’s just the funniest thing. “A bug not fancy enough for you?”

“Not when I imagine you dating a girl in pest control, no.”

Frank throws his pillow at Billy’s face, who pushes it off with the back of the book he’s reading and looks at Frank with both eyebrows raised. “Hey,” he says. “Maybe she’s hot. I don’t know.”

“Mm,” says Frank. He’d been asking for it, really. He has a mosquito bite right next to it that he can’t stop itching, so it’s on display to anyone who fancies offering their opinion.

“Maybe she’s an anteater,” Billy says. 

Frank throws his other pillow at him.

*

When he’s stripping David Lieberman down, the sight of something on his shoulder makes Frank stop dead. It’s a perfect replica of his Punisher skull all in black, like a-. He touches it, pressing down hard to see whether it was inked on or grew out of Lieberman’s skin organically.

Jury’s out. 

Frank snorts softly and shakes his head. An NSA analyst. He'll do everything he can to get Frank to trust him, even if that means faking a soul mark. It’s fake.

Sure enough, when Frank takes off David’s shoes he finds what looks like a popsicle on the back of his calf. 

“Didn’t count on being incapacitated, did you Lieberman?” he says, even though David is still unconscious. He finishes ziptieing the guy's ankles to the office chair and then drags him into the hallway, where Frank can see him from almost every room in the place. He’s already cased them.

Sitting down on one of the beds to wait for the guy to wake up, Frank puts his back to the wall. He has a band-aid over the bug on his arm already; his mark is probably a matter of public record, but no sense making things any easier for Lieberman.

When he begins to stir, Frank gets to his feet and takes the bucket with him. He empties it over his prisoner and enjoys the outraged response he gets. He waits for David to calm down before he nods towards his bare shoulder. “Think you’re clever, do you?"

“That’s not real,” David stammers, his teeth chattering with cold. “It’s a tattoo. I got it two years ago.”

“Shit, I could’ve told you that.” Frank draws up a chair and sets it down in front of his prisoner, straddling it with his hands resting on the back. Then he starts the interrogation he’s been waiting for: “Where are they, David? Who’s coming?”

*

He knows David has lied to him more than once. Lieberman lies to protect himself, to get attention and when it makes life easier for him. It aggravates Frank every time.

“You ever tried telling people the truth?” he asks him one day, after he finds the cameras David swore he took down still running. Still recording them down here, for whatever purpose.

Lieberman is sat in the swivel chair he was once tied to and is halfway through a bowl of cereal. He takes a moment to think about that, putting one robed hand to his forehead and pushing his fingers through his hair. “I’ve got to lie to people sometimes, Frank. It’s my job.”

“Not anymore.” Frank has his hands resting on the computer desk, staring at the camera feed of them talking. “Now you’re just doing it ‘cause you enjoy it."

Lieberman puts the bowl down on the table next to him and spreads his hands. “What would you have me do? I’m trying to survive. I can’t just shoot my way out when things go wrong like you can, I have to be _careful._ "

“Careful,” Frank says. “That what you call it?”

When David doesn’t answer, Frank scratches at the bug on his arm - it keeps itching lately - and that reminds him of something. He bares his teeth in disgust, shaking his head and turning to face David. He points to his wrist. “You even faked a mark just to make me trust you.”

“I told you,” David says, between gritted teeth. “It’s a tattoo. I thought it would look cool.”

“Yeah, see, I don’t believe that, Lieberman.” Frank shoves himself off the desk and heads towards him, leaning forward to get in David's face. With David sitting down, Frank’s the one with the height advantage . “I think that’s a way of getting in my head. What do you think?"

“I think sometimes you’re really paranoid, Frank.”

Frank hits him in the chest; just a cuff, but David’s not expecting it so it knocks him back. Frank grabs the back of the chair over David’s shoulder before he tilts back too far and slams his other hand on the table, leaning down so that he’s right in David’s space. “Think I don’t know when I’m being played?”

David eyes him, one curl drooping down over his forehead. “I think you don’t want to know anything that important.”

Frank smiles, like this is going to be good. “The fuck is that supposed to mean?”

“I mean-“ David’s arm whips out and he grabs Frank by the wrist, turning it over. Frank lets him. “You don’t know what this is, do you?”

The familiar black bug sits there like a second accuser. Tiny red lines have begun to spread out from each leg, making patterns all around it. They have only recently started appearing, right around the time it started itching something fierce. “It’s infected is what it is,” Frank says, yanking his arm away.

“It’s a microchip,” David says, staring back at him. “And if you know that, then I’m not the only one lying.”

Frank meets his gaze for a second, then drops it and looks at the mark himself. It’s practically pulsing, it itches so bad. And now David mentions it, it does look like a funny little computer chip, with digital lines spreading out in search of a connection.

“So what,” he says, “I’m gonna marry a computer - that what you saying?"

A look comes over David’s face that Frank’s not sure he’s ever seen on the man before. Eyeing Frank warily, David edges the chair forward and puts his hands out flat on the table. 

“It’s what Micro’s short for,” he says, and Frank stops breathing.

*

“I told Sarah it was meant to represent mortality.” David’s arm twitches where it’s pressed up against Frank's. “The fragility of the human spirit, or something. It was college. I thought I was being deep. But she wouldn't miss a skull on my shoulder, so I had to come up with something.”

“A fake,” Frank rumbles.

David glances sideways at him. “That popsicle on my leg - I assume you noticed when you took all my clothes off.”

“Yeah, like in your story.” Frank remembers David telling him about how he met Sarah, how a friend lent him the costume. How it felt like fate, because when they compared marks his and Sarah’s matched up. “Hers was in the exact same spot,” David had said when he was telling it.

Now, David laughs bitterly. “I had my popsicle put on where hers was, just to give it some legitimacy. Somehow, I got away with it." He sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose. "Oh, she freaked out when you started showing up in the news, but I convinced her you must’ve got the skull from the same shitty tattoo book I had.”

He gives Frank an apologetic look and Frank barks a laugh. 

Frank looks down at his arm then, sandwiched between them where they’re sat on the floor with their backs to the wall, and touches his finger to the microchip. It’s not burning now, just warm. Like it just wanted to be acknowledged. “I thought it was a bug."

“No, not a bug,” David says. “It's a feature.”

Frank nods to himself. After a moment, David nudges their shoulders together, then does it again. Frank shoots him a quizzical look.

“Seriously?” David’s eyes widen and he raises his eyebrows. It’s Frank’s favourite look on him and it makes Frank realise just how close they are to one another. "You haven’t heard that one before? Who am I going to tell all of my nerd jokes to if you’re just going to sit there and-“

Frank’s lips touch his - hesitant at first, but David answers them. He shuts up, thank god, and kisses Frank back. When Frank leans into it, David makes an abominable noise and wraps a hand around the back of Frank’s neck, practically falling into his lap.

Frank chuckles into his mouth. “Woah, Lieberman.” His hands come up on either side to steady him.

David hooks a knee over Frank’s lap, straddling him. “No,” he growls. He kisses Frank so hard they’re both going to have bruises and Frank fists his hands in Lieberman’s t-shirt in response. 

If this guy is his soulmate, Frank thinks he can just about cope with it.


	4. Bullets

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Soulmates share each other's injuries. If David gets one more gunshot wound, he’s going to flip.

If David gets one more gunshot wound, he’s going to flip.

He’s narrowed down his soulmate to one of two people: a drug runner in a Mexican cartel or a masochist who should’ve had his gun license revoked decades ago. It’s the only way he can explain it.

He might as well be an ad for an anti-soulmate campaign with how often it happens. All of the nurses at Metro General know him by name, age and social security number now and he’s on friendly terms - or at least, as friendly as you can get when you’re in pain - with at least ten different doctors.

A couple of them have mentioned how odd it is and the ones who haven’t _want_ to. Hearing about his crazy soulmate grinds at David in an unpleasant way, so even though he understands why the medical team are fascinated by him he wishes no one would ask. And no one would comment.

“Hey, Sarah.” This one happened in his office. At his desk. His shoulder had twitched and all of a sudden he was seeping blood through his suit, draining out through a bullet hole made without a bullet. He had rung his wife from the ambulance on the way to the hospital. “I got hurt again. My shoulder this time.”

She had said the usual panicky shit she always did when David’s soulmate passed along another injury and David had felt the usual jolt of guilt and anger that she - Sarah, mother of his children and love of his life - wasn’t the one doing this to him.

She couldn’t. She’s never even held a gun.

Maybe the next bullet will kill the person linked to him and then David won’t have to worry about hospital bills anymore. Even if, technically, that will kill him too.

The next one almost does.

David is washing dishes when his head explodes. He reels, dropping the cloth and the plate which smashes on the floor of the kitchen like a far-off firework. His vision loses colour. His body sags downward, his back wet, and his brain wonders faintly how he managed to get water there.

He blinks and his shirt is covered in blood. He touches his skull and feels a chunk missing. The tile is so cool against his elbow. 

It takes weeks for him to wake up this time. They put him in an induced coma, he later learns, to stop his brain swelling any further than it already had. His _brain._

To David, it seems like no time has passed at all when he returns to the land of the living. Only, Zach and Leo are asleep on hospital chairs and Sarah looks like she’s been awake for a year.

“You died,” she says, when he asks her what happened. “They think - they think you were shot in the head.”

“Oh,” says David. What can he say to that? 

Maybe, he wonders, after visiting hours are over and he is left with his thoughts and the familiar beep of machines, his soulmate decided to check out after all. Maybe they're sick of all this pain.

David certainly is.

It comes as a surprise when the bullet finally hits _him_.

Floating down the Hudson river, David has all the time in the world to regret his actions: to weep for his beautiful children who he will never see again; to wish he had never taken a job at the goddamned NSA; to wonder what his soulmate thinks, bleeding out through his heart in the first serious injury David’s ever passed on.

David realises that, even after all of his hospital stays, he doesn’t want to bring another person down with him.

But death doesn’t come. Instead, David gets dangerously cold and only survives his trip in the water by grabbing onto a ladder built into the side of the river wall. He hauls himself up one-handed and lies on the concrete gasping for a minute or two, before looking up to find out where he’s landed.

In some ways he’s in luck. The only people who witnessed his survival are homeless and are just as determined to avoid authority as he is. A woman twenty years older than him wraps a blanket around his shoulders and gives him coffee. David’s chest _kills_ , but it hasn’t killed  _him_ and he finds out why when he remembers he’s still carrying his phone.

It’s smashed to pieces, but it slowed the trajectory of the bullet just enough that the casing is only nestled in his skin. He pulls it out by the light of the fire and looks at it for a moment, before he flicks it away.

He’s going to have a scar and one hell of a bruise, but it didn’t kill him. It didn’t even go _through_  him.

Somehow, David finds himself laughing. The woman only smiles.

*

Frank Castle is hard to find once he decides to disappear. It takes almost an entire year for Frank to break his cover and kill someone again. Some _ones._

David is barely sleeping by this time and staggers out of his camp bed seconds after his radio scanner chatters out: _"11-44. Uh, chief? We got a lot of dead bodies down here.”_

He’s into the CCTV feed opposite that building minutes later.

Is it Frank? It sure looks like him. Even gunless, bearded and minus his trademark skull, Frank Castle has a certain way of holding himself. David taps a few keys and follows him down the street, downloading the footage and erasing the originals as he goes.

At times he loses him and then he runs his hands through his hair and leans forward until his nose is nearly touching the screen until he finds Frank again. He watches Frank stride into a shitty apartment block without even glancing back. He looks it up on Google Maps. Not far.

It takes every ounce of restraint left in David to stay put. He’s desperate; it’s been over _eleven months_  with nothing but video feeds of his family breaking apart for company. But he knows Frank. He knows that showing up unannounced isn't a good idea.

Pushing himself away from his desk, he gets up and starts pulling together the pieces of a plan he came up with months ago.

After the game of cat-and-mouse at the diner, David loses Frank again. He knows why: the bastard’s figured out he has face and gait recognition. It doesn’t make it any easier, knowing how he’s been fooled. Holed up in his basement, it’s been a long time since David’s felt like the one being pursued.

He’s drumming his fingers on the desk trying to think when something interrupts his search: a tickle on his cheek. His fingers come away red when he scratches it.

“Again?” David says to himself. At least this injury won’t take a hospital to heal. It barely even hurts, whatever it is.

He’s halfway to his feet heading to the bathroom when the feed showing the outside of the Lieberman house finds Frank Castle.

“No,” he murmurs, putting his hand down. “No no no no no. Frank, what are you doing?”

Frank seems perfectly content talking to David's wife, by the look of things. David zooms in, squinting past the pixels just to be sure. That’s him. It’s gotta be. Holy  _shit._

Sarah invites Frank inside and David follows them in on the feeds. What does Frank want? He’s going upstairs.

David has had to deal with more than a few moral quandries in the year he’s been on the run. The answer to this one is that he has a camera in the bathroom - just one - facing the sink. Just in case.

Frank closes the bathroom door behind him and turns on the faucet. He wets his hand and rubs the side of his face, like he's trying to wipe away a mark. It’s the side facing away from David’s camera, so he doesn't know immediately what he's doing, but he sees Frank's hand come away bloody.

David’s eyes watch the blood drip from Frank's hand and stain the water swirling down the plug hole, but his mind stops working as Frank turns his head and exposes the cut over his ear. 

The sight flings him back several years, until he's standing in the kitchen washing dishes again while someone - somewhere - lines up a shot with the back of his soulmate’s head.

Momentarily aghast, David sways and hits pause on the feed before hurrying into the basement’s dingey bathroom. He hits the faucet on with his elbow and pushes his hair out of the way, eyeing the trickle of blood that has made its way from a thin cut over his ear down the side of his neck.

He grabs a handful of water and starts scrubbing, not caring if it hurts, not caring if he gets a little wet. He has to compare what he sees.

Cleaning complete, he gets back to the computers and holds up his phone. A wild face looks back at him, grimacing at its reflection. He angles his phone so that it’s right next to Frank’s still face on the screen and tilts his head into the same position.

It’s in the same fucking place.

Throwing his phone onto the desk, David clicks off the feed and rifles through the file he has built up on Frank. He clicks on the folder marked _Trial_ and finds the photo he’s looking for.

David hadn’t followed Frank's trial very closely at the time. He had been recovering from cracked ribs and a host of bruises, not to mention the brain injury - the one in the kitchen - the year before.

There it is. The x-ray. The white metal bullet lodged in Frank Castle’s brain and the expert’s opinion that it had been fired, from behind, at point-blank range.

David reaches up and touches the scar under his hair.

Frank doesn’t answer his phone until the next morning, by which time David has found every single record out there of Frank - or the Punisher’s - injuries and matched them against his own.

“Frank. We need to talk.” David practically begs when Frank finally picks up.

“Do we?” Frank’s gravelly voice shoots back. “Do I need to do anything for you?"

“You can stop talking to my family,” David says, his mouth running away with him in his desperation. “They have nothing to do with this. Just talk to me, Frank. Talk to me.”

“You listen here, Lieberman. We’re doing this my way now, you hear me? Not your way. _My_  way. I’m sick of your shit. If you really want to talk, give me a number I can contact you on and do what I say. You got that?”

David barely eeks out a “Yeah,” before the line goes dead. He sighs and stares at the phone, running his fingers through his hair. Then he sinks back into his chair and texts Frank the number.

*

The despair he felt on the day he woke up from the induced coma, when he realised what he had done - what he was doing - to his family, to _Sarah_ , every time someone who wasn’t her sent him to the hospital: that’s the same despair he feels right now.

Frank, Frank had sent him someone  _else_ and Frank was in the wind. He didn’t even give David a _chance_. To explain. To show him. To try and… David doesn’t even know anymore.

He knows, innately, that this is also his luck. That this is the kind of life he’s meant to live, really. A life where he only exists to injure the people closest to him, but cannot bear to be without them.

When Frank appears in the basement doorframe like some kind of vengeful wraith, David starts to laugh. It makes sense. It all makes so much sense.

That’s when Frank hits him.

_Fuck_ , his head _kills_. David has occasionally woken up with his face stuck to the basement floor after a night with free access to a bottle, so after a second or two of disorientation he figures out where he is. The only difference is that Frank Castle is flat on his face next to him.

David tries to laugh again and finds that all he can do is breathe out little gasps that hurt his throat and makes his eyes squeeze shut. It’s not that it’s not funny - he just can’t believe that after all he’s put Sarah through, he’s about to put someone else through hell all over again.

“Frank,” David says, as the man opens his eyes - so brown they’re almost black - and _(god, the man is a machine)_  Frank starts moving immediately, assessing the situation he finds himself in, as always.

David lays his cheek back on the cool concrete floor. “I told you we had to talk."


	5. Rupture

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 5\. One of the names is your soulmate. The other will betray you. Frank wishes he knew which was which.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: suicide.

It takes eighteen years for your soul marks to show up. Eighteen long years of people whispering, watching each other and writing fake names on their skin.

In the last year of highschool, names start appearing for real and beneath all of the college applications and exams an electric tension begins to spread throughout the year group. The kids who have to wait until the summer: they look at their peers with envy. The ones who’ve been boasting for months about their early birthdate now seem shy, inwardly focused, like their expectations have been changed or shattered.

On November 15th, 1994, Frank wakes up to his arms on fire.

He runs to the bathroom and shoves them under the sink, shaking with adrenaline and pain. It’s like someone is branding him: one name on each wrist.

When the burning reduces to a dull, deep ache, Frank turns off the faucet and braces himself against the sink, letting out a long breath. Then he glances down and turns his arms over.

_David Lieberman_ says his left wrist.

_Billy Russo_ says his right.

His mother is knocking on the door, asking him if he’s all right. If he’s - she doesn’t mention it explicitly - okay with what he’s seen.

Frank reaches for a towel and sticks his arms underneath it. He sidles out of the bathroom and says a few words that he doesn’t remember, before heading back to his room.

Both of the names on his arms are _men._

Sure, it’s not illegal anymore, but Frank knows what will happen if this gets out. The shitkicking he’ll get at school. The raised eyebrows and apologetic faces in job interviews. His family- shit, he’ll probably get disowned.

Frank takes the tape he uses to wrap his fists at boxing club and starts to wind it around each wrist.

*

He joins the military. It seems like the best route available to him. No one but him has seen the names since they appeared and he refuses to show them when asked at his physical. The assessor just nods and marks it on her clipboard; Frank guesses it’s common enough that it’s not enough to fail him.

The Marines don’t care that he hides them: this is what Frank finds out when he joins. Boot camp is full of men his age with full-length sleeves, or bandages, or tattoos over the names. The drill instructor reams them about the condition of their boots and their shitty haircuts, but doesn’t say a word about their amateur coverups.

At their first physical, they all get offered velcro bands that cover their forearms. Only two people don’t take them.

Boot camp is fucking hard, but Frank likes that. Even if his mouth gets him on all three drill instructor's shit lists within the first week, he likes the challenge. He likes the pain. He shouts right back at the DIs, refusing to give in.

Frank gets a reputation for being a pain in the ass pretty quick.

Still, they can’t argue that he doesn’t dig in. Screaming in his face; assigning him the worst duties; giving him twice as many crunches or sit ups or laps - none of it seems to phase Frank Castle. On the last day of camp, the SDI takes him aside and grudgingly admits that he might become a Marine after all.

After 9/11, Frank is shipped to Iraq. The platoon is mostly made up of guys he’s met before, but there are a couple of new faces and it’s impossible to remember everyone he’s ever served with. Especially since the recent explosion in enlists.

Most of them wear the mark-hiding armbands, but Frank is old enough now for the words to have faded into near-unreadable script. He only wears the bands out of habit now and won’t need them for much longer. Thirty is the average age the names fade for good, and then only he will remember them.

A man a few years younger than him drops his stuff on the bunk next to Frank’s and starts to unpack. Frank studies him, noting how clean and - untouched - the man seems. He’s old for this to be his first tour, but there’s none of the dust and sun damage on him that Frank would expect. Maybe he hangs back from a fight; doesn’t give everything that’s asked of him.

Maybe that’s a shitty view to have of someone you’ve never spoken to, but Frank’s life might depend on him someday and he needs to know what the outcome will be.

The guy finishes dressing his bunk and turns around. His eyes are sharp and he holds out his hand with a smile that assesses Frank just as frankly. “Billy Russo,” he says.

Frank’s words die in his throat and he clears it, covering the shock with his fist. He holds out his other hand and takes Billy’s. “Frank Castle,” he says, watching to see whether Billy reacts too. “This your first?”

Billy’s eyes widen just perceptibly, but otherwise he doesn’t do a thing. Good hiding. “Second,” he says. “Spent two years in Afghanistan."

“Shit,” Frank says, sympathetically. “My third.”

Billy nods. “I hear we’re shipping out with four other platoons next week.”

Frank nods right back at him. “Don’t get too excited.” He grins, all teeth. “It's just another sandy shithole."

Billy laughs like he didn’t expect that and turns back to his bunk, rummaging through his pack for the rest of his things. Frank settles back onto his bed with his arms behind his head and makes himself relax. It’s not _too_  hard: Billy is charming and even on the back foot he’s not giving off asshole vibes. 

Frank feels the faint scratch of the letters on his arms and the first stirrings of wonder as to which person Billy Russo will turn out to be.

*

Maria’s not his soulmate. Maria isn’t even male. But she’s hot as fuck and a lot of fun, even when she’s teasing him. 

Frank has a choice when she tells him she’s pregnant. 

He could ditch her. He could be the frat boy who couldn’t keep his dick in his pants on military leave. He could show her the barely-visible words on his arms in defiance of who she wants him to be.

He doesn’t do any of that. Frank has learned one thing from his time as a Marine: everything has a consequence, and this one’s not so bad.

He stays with her. He marries her, three months in. He checks his arms one day and finds nothing there. Maria has his name in swirly, greying script on her left wrist. The name on her right is William Rawlins.

When he returns from his next tour to meet his son, he brings Billy with him. Turns out Billy is a natural with the kid and charms the shit out of Maria. At dusk, when they’re out on the porch drinking beer together and trying to remember they’re back on safe turf, Frank almost mentions it. He almost brings up Billy's name.

But he doesn’t. He never says a word. Frank has learned one thing from his time as a Marine: everything has a consequence.

*

When Karen says the spook’s name, Frank almost has a heart attack.

_David Lieberman._ And who the fuck else would know how that would affect him? Has anyone ever seen his marks without him knowing? Has anyone ever wormed their way that far under his skin?

Frank doesn’t think so. Frank hopes not.

He enlists Curtis’ help to find out if this guy is the real deal.

“David” is in his forties, around the same age as him. That means his names have entirely gone and Frank grunts with disappointment as he zipties the man’s wrists to the chair. It wouldn’t help him figure out just how this guy is planning to make an enemy of him, but it might give Frank an idea of whether he is who he claims to be.

When David wakes up, he starts babbling. Promising. _Stalling,_ Frank thinks.

“Why are you fucking following me?” he asks him.

David continues with the same old story, so Frank decides to let him stew for a while in the chair.

No one comes. No one comes. And then David finally breaks cover and decks him.

*

Once Frank has his freedom back, he leaves in the middle of the night. David may have proved who he says he is. He may have avoided killing Frank when he was at David's mercy. But Frank-

He can’t just let  _anyone_ in like that.

Frank sits down on the pier at the docks, legs dangling over the edge. A single streetlamp lights up his forearms as he looks at them. He can’t see the words anymore, but he remembers:

His right: _Billy Russo._

His left: _David Lieberman._

They say that only one of the names is your soulmate. The other, supposedly, will betray you one day.

David seems like a decent guy, but he’s known Billy for years. He’d trust him with his kids, if he still had them. He’d trust him with Maria.

Frank balls his hands into fists and lowers his arms back into his lap.

Why couldn’t it have been Karen? Why was her name never on his skin? Or Maria, the woman he married, the mother of his children - why couldn’t it have been her name instead to match his own? He knows he likes women. He can pick out an attractive guy, but it’s not the same way he feels about women. He… trusts them.

There are books about soulmates. Movies, where the hero’s soulmate is the only one who can give him everything he needs. Frank has always dismissed that as bullshit marketing, but he wonders now - out here, alone on the pier - he wonders.

He can’t outright  _ask_ David, just like he can’t outright ask Billy. It’s not Frank. He acts, he doesn’t say. He doesn’t have Billy’s way with words or David’s insight into people and he’d fuck it all up given half a chance.

Whoever has his name on their wrist hasn't ever spoken up either. So either they’re just as horrified or they don’t give a shit. Frank can sympathise with either one.

But now that Maria is dead and at least part of him has started to breathe again, he can’t help feeling like he’s doing the one thing he never wanted to do: avoiding it.

*

Frank spends the next few weeks analysing an analyst. It’s not hard; David barely ever leaves the powerplant and when he does it’s more than often with Frank by his side.

This is what he learns:

David is nervous about being in charge, despite wanting to lead him.

David wants so much to be back home that he won’t go anywhere near it.

David is sincere, sometimes. David is mostly mercurial.

David also actually seems to _like_ Frank. It blows Frank’s mind every time David calls him a friend. He'd thought his ability to be kind enough for people to like him had died in that hailstorm of bullets.

On his visits to the Lieberman house, Frank tries to get glimpses of David’s wrists in the framed family photos, but it’s a no go. David’s either taken them down since he died or he deliberately avoided showing them. 

Sarah had a namecast made from her mark before David died. It’s a perfect replica of his name in sharp metallic relief on her bedside table.

Frank tries not to think about how it’s written the exact same way on him.

Nothing about David Lieberman screams ‘enemy’. Nothing strikes him as the worst human being Frank’s ever met. He can put hundreds of men in line before David for that trophy and most of them have already died under his gun.

In the end, it takes until David runs facial recognition on the man Frank would’ve killed - if the shithead hadn’t had bulletproof windows - for Frank's life to start unravelling.

“I’ve got him,” David says, eyes glued to the screen. “William-“

He stops.

Frank drops down from the bar where he’s been doing pull-ups and heads over, wiping his face on his tank top. David is staring at the screen with a look on his face like he just bit into a rat; Frank assumes it’s something in William’s biography that did it.

“You know the guy?” Frank says, as he sidles up and leans forward to check it out for himself.

_ William Rawlins. _

“In a manner of speaking,” David says, faintly.

Frank barely hears him. He’s too busy flashing back to the day Maria met him. The first night they spent together. The pale shaft of light on her wrists as she smiled and held them up to Frank’s face, asking: “Are you Frank or William?”

“Frank,” he hears, and blinks his way back into reality. His fingers have dug grooves into Lieberman’s office chair.

“Yeah,” Frank says. “That’s him."

He picks up a gun and sticks it in his waistband. Then he leaves without saying another thing. He doesn’t listen to David’s questions. He doesn’t let David keep him there. He drives out of the complex and keeps driving.

The gun sits beside him on the seat.

Eventually, he finds the place he's looking for. A woodland; a hut; the one he came to before. He reverses onto the ill-used dirt track and keeps going until he can’t anymore. The woods envelop him like a cloak.

His phone vibrates. Fourteen missed calls.

Frank turns it off.

They will find Rawlins: this he knows. It won’t be too hard (he knows this too). What Frank cannot deal with - what he has done everything to avoid dealing with until now - is what’s going to happen to him once it's done.

David will find Rawlins, if he has to. Frank hadn’t missed the impact that name made on him; David won’t stop until he erases Rawlins just like Frank would’ve done. He will do the job Frank failed to do in Kandahar and kill the bastard.

Frank closes his eyes and runs his fingers over the bridge of his nose. He’s bursting, bursting with something and he can’t seem to escape it wherever he goes.

What if, after he finishes all of this, that feeling is still there?

With the engine off there is nothing but silence and yet Frank still feels surrounded.

He picks up the gun. He’s deadly with it.

_ One shot, one kill. _

He isn’t sure what makes him put the weapon down. It certainly isn’t Rawlins, who is a dead man walking whatever happens to Frank Castle. It definitely isn’t the indifferent silence of the forest.

A car triple-flashes its beams at him as he comes back onto the highway and Frank pulls the gun again, only to drop it onto the seat when he recognises the van. The two vehicles pull over at the next exit and David runs out, throwing his arms around Frank and hugging him so tightly it’s a wonder the man can breathe.

Something in Frank’s throat loosens when he realises David is  _sobbing._

“Don’t do that to me, man,” David sobs into his shoulder. “Don’t ever do that to me again.”

Frank hesitantly puts his arms around David, like he might collapse if Frank doesn't. “What’re you saying?” he mumbles, embarrassed.

David pulls back to look Frank in the eye. His own eyes are swimming: pools of blue sparked with bloodshot red. “Asshole,” he says, though the effect is spoiled by the tremor in his voice. “You think I only put cameras in my house?"

Frank can only stare at him. He sees himself in the driver’s seat again; he sees what David must have seen.

David is sincere. Frank figures out, when David crushes them together again without asking for a response, that David is also kind.

*

When Billy betrays him, it’s almost a relief.

The guns pointing at him don’t matter. The Homeland agents on the stairs don’t figure. Frank grabs a fucking fire hose and takes a painful shortcut to the first floor.

He hits the ground running and doesn’t start thinking again until he’s out of the building, and even then his brain’s occupied with staying out of sight and not bleeding too much as he limps home.

David is nowhere to be seen when he gets back, so Frank heads straight for the bathroom. He was winged by a bullet at some point: it's carved a path through the thin skin at the side of his skull. He also has a chunk of metal door sticking out of his arm.

Frank eyes the piece of metal, breathing in and out, before he reaches over and yanks it.

It falls into the basin of the sink and Frank watches blood leak down his arm towards it, pooling red at his wrist where a name once was. He touches the spot where the B used to sit.

That feeling like something inside him is about to burst starts up again and he grips the sink with both hands, leaning forward to press his forehead against the cold mirror.

David comes in a few minutes later and Frank lets him patch him up. He even says a few things: mindless shit that he won’t remember later. He avoids David’s concerned eyes like they’re contagious, because they just might be. It doesn’t stop the shredding going on in his guts.

He doesn’t have to hold it together for long, because Billy is desperate to be noticed now that he’s broken from cover. Frank sends David away to be with his family and starts improving the basement, setting it up for a firefight.

He’s pretty sure that he’ll die down here, but he doesn’t.

He’s more than sure he’ll die if he goes back, but it’s the best way he has to get to Rawlins. The man who killed his family and threatened to murder David’s can't be allowed to get away with living.

Frank doesn’t let Lieberman say goodbye. He can tell the guy has something he’s trying to say, something that won’t quite come out, but he just puts a hand on David's shoulder and tells him to take care of his family.

“My name’s on your arm, huh?” Frank says through a bloody nose, after two hours of attempted torture. Rawlins backhands him again.

When he starts blacking out, he _knows_ he’s going to die. Knows it and welcomes it. Anything, if it'll make the feeling like he’s being ripped apart fade away.

Maria meets him in that woozy place at the back of his head after one too many punches. She smiles at him and takes his hand, pulling him towards her. Frank follows. Frank will always follow.

She puts his hand on her waist and they start to dance, swaying from side to side like teenagers who’ve never done it before.

“Hey,” she says, smiling that sweet smile that Frank fell for all those years ago. She nods to the hand on her shoulder. “Where’d that go?”

Frank looks at the empty stretch of skin on his arm and feels an inexorable pull back towards the now. He shakes his head instead, trying to stay. “He wasn’t-“ 

He shuts his eyes briefly, then just says: "He knew.”

Maria lifts his hand and turns herself in a pretty circle, before linking their fingers together again. “And this one?” she says, ghosting her other hand along the underside of Frank’s left arm.

Frank doesn’t answer her for a long time. He just sways with his wife to the rhythm of a faint song, unable to look anywhere but her eyes. “I don’t know,” he breathes, at last.

“That’s not like you,” Maria says, giving his hand a squeeze. She leans in to brush her nose against his cheek; touches her lips to his. “You’re always so sure.”

He feels the imprint of her kiss even as he succeeds, even as he rolls onto his back on the concrete ground and bleeds out a few more litres of blood.

*

He doesn’t talk about that conversation when he finally wakes up. He keeps up the charade, just like before, only now there is no ripping or tearing, just dull acceptance.

Smashing Russo’s face into a pit of glass again and again goes some way towards helping him feel again.

Frank knows who he is. He took the measure of himself a long time ago. That’s why he knows he can’t just walk in with David and his family and celebrate Thanksgiving. 

In the van, he chides David with the same gentle, easy humour that the both of them have fallen into lately. David takes his apology wordlessly and with a smile that says he understands. Like he always does.

When David disappears inside and the front door shuts, something in Frank ruptures.

For a good minute, he thinks he’s reopened a wound or been shot through the car window, but there’s no blood. There’s agony - oh is there agony - worse than anything Rawlins could throw at him, but there's nothing else anyone can see.

Frank doubles over in the driver’s seat, holding himself together with one arm as he shoves the van into drive and peals off down the road. He can’t let the Liebermans see him like this. They’re too good. They would never let him go.

By some miracle he doesn’t get stopped, even though he must be weaving all over the road. He ends up parked jaggedly at the pier he walked to all that time ago, back when he first left the powerplant basement.

He walks towards the water, pressing his hand to his stomach. Trying not to howl, he sits down at the edge. His legs dangle far above the water.

So this is it. This is what happens when the gunfire stops.

All he can see is David standing at the door and looking back, so he shuts his eyes and puts his hands over his face, pushing the heels of his palms against his eyelids. Trying to erase the picture.

When that doesn’t work, he opens his eyes again and runs a hand over the close-cut stubble of his hair. He catches sight of a black mark on his arm and glances at it, only to lower his arm and stare.

_David Lieberman_ , says his wrist in bold black letters, like it never left.

He checks his other arm, but that wrist is bare. There’s not even the faintest remnant of Billy Russo.

“Fuck off,” he says to the writing, grinding his teeth together. “You can’t, you piece of shit. You _can’t._ ”

“Can’t what?”

Frank turns and David Lieberman is standing next to his car.

He turns back to the water and laughs: a long, merciless laugh that doesn’t stop until David sits down beside him. “Cameras,” he says. “Right."

“Right,” David says, offering him a concerned smile that Frank deliberately doesn’t look at.

“You’re supposed to be with your family,” Frank says instead, staring at the water. He voices it like a punch; like it’ll get David to leave him alone. Like that ever works.

“You keep saying that,” David says, still eyeing him. Then he shifts closer and gently puts an arm around Frank’s shoulders.

“I  _am_ with my family,” he says.

Frank breathes in a shaky breath of air. He doesn’t relax into David’s arm and David doesn’t press him. They just sit there together without speaking, each lost in the depths of their own thoughts.

“I didn’t know,” Frank says, after a while. He blinks water onto his cheek. He’s not sure when his vision started to blur. “I didn’t know who it was.”

“You had Billy, didn’t you?” David says - always so perceptive, always so goddamned  _right._

Frank just nods.

David’s arm squeezes them together. “I’m so sorry, Frank.” Even his voice sounds unsteady now. "I’m so fucking sorry."

Frank grunts in response, and at that, something begins to unspool in his stomach. Like a wire wound impossibly tight has just remembered how to ease. He tilts his head, finally looking at David, who just looks back: never pushing it, never asking Frank for anything he isn’t willing to give.

Frank sighs and drops his gaze, dipping his head down until it rests on David’s shoulder. From here, he can feel David calm down too. Part of Frank wants to blame himself for doing this to the man, but he’s too exhausted to hate himself any more.

“I knew who you were the moment I first saw you,” David says, his voice soft. “Your military records. Easy enough to find someone if you work at the NSA.”

Frank shuts his eyes and listens: listens to the creak of the boats, to the rumble of David’s throat and to the hush of the water. After a moment, he feels a hand touch his and responds, linking their fingers together.

“When they had me killed, I, uh, ran out of excuses to leave you alone.” David huffs an airy laugh. “Sorry.”

“I knew you didn’t trust me,” he continues. “And I thought I knew why. But it’s just never the right time to ask, is it? Hey Frank, didya have my name written on your wrist in DNA or RNA or something at some point in your life? It’s an awful opener.”

Frank smiles into David’s shoulder. It is.

“You probably would’ve hit me and we’d be even worse off after.” David shakes his head. “So I left it.”

“Why not for good?” Frank asks him.

“I couldn’t. I can’t.” David gives him an assessing look. “Doesn’t work, does it?”

Frank pictures the oppressive dark of the woods and the glint of the glock resting on his tongue.

He doesn’t have to say yes.

A soft brush of fingers brings him back to the present. David is tracing the lines of his name along Frank’s arm. “You know, _your_ name showed back up when you killed Rawlins. Scared the shit out of me. I thought you were dead. I mean, you  _were_ dead."

David finishes the name and loops back around, tracing it again. “I was so fucking scared, Frank.”

“Sarah,” Frank says, quietly. “And Zach and Leo.”

“Are part of my family,” David answers, just as quietly, “and part of yours too.”

Frank shakes his head and almost pulls away, but can't bring himself to. “I’ll kill’em,” he says instead, into the fabric of David’s sweater. “I’ll bring hell down on them and it’ll kill‘em. It'll kill you too."

David turns his head and touches his lips to the top of Frank’s skull. “You crazy, silly man,” he murmurs. “They wouldn’t _be_ here without you.”

The thread in his stomach that has been slowly unwinding suddenly snaps and Frank lists against David, unable to hold himself back anymore. He claws at David’s sweater, squeezing his eyes tight shut and saying shit that he can’t help but remember this time. David just holds him, pinning Frank to his chest in a way that feels like he's the only thing preventing Frank from falling apart.

Maybe he is, but when Frank can finally breathe again the agony has gone.

“Come on,” David says, getting to his feet. He holds out a hand. “Come on, Frank. Let’s go home."

Frank looks up at him, then out across the water.

Then he turns back inland.


	6. Shine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 6\. Everyone shines when they meet their soulmate. The stronger the feeling, the stronger they shine.

When David married Sarah, they were awash in pools of light. Happy couples surrounded them, towing along their kids and their friends and wishing them happiness. Sarah’s own parents - still together after forty years - shone like the sun.

In their wedding photos, Sarah is beaming. David is looking at her like she’s his whole world. The photographer used the brightest flash possible, but even with its help you can tell, looking at them, that neither one of them is shining.

It didn’t matter to David when they first met, because back then they were both ridiculously young and he would have panicked if he’d met his soulmate then. Years in, it started to matter a little, if only because he’d started to fall for her in the real way: the buying more ibuprofen when she was sick, making pancakes in the shape of her face, farting in the same room kind of way.

When he had finally brought himself to share his concern, Sarah had said something that stuck with him for years after. _Do you feel like something is missing?_ she’d asked him, holding his hands to stop him from picking at his cuticles. _Do you wish I was someone else?_

No. He didn’t then and he doesn’t now.

Still, that’s cold, cold comfort when he can see the light leaping off her shoulders as she kisses Frank Castle.

Frank, thank fuck, remains as dark a figure as ever. The edges of his hoodie are smudged with the goddamn _rays_  Sarah is giving off right now, though, and that’s not much better.

David doesn’t breathe until they break away.

Frank notices it; David sees the moment he does. Frank looks completely suckerpunched and if he’s honest, David’s a little bitterly pleased underneath the horror. He tells him so to the screen, even though Frank can’t hear him. “Yeah. _Thank_ you.” 

Sarah, bless her lovely heart, doesn’t notice the light herself. David’s glad of that too - if she _had_  noticed, he might have broken all promises to stay away and kicked the front door down.

Refusing to let his eyes leave the screen, David hooks the toe of his shoe around the box beneath his desk. He reaches down and pulls out the bottle of whiskey, glancing at it for a moment, then shrugs and forgoes a glass. Why bother, when this is happening?

David's eyes snap back to the screen and he unscrews the cap, tipping the bottle back against his lips and feeling - welcoming - the acidic burn down his throat. He can almost pretend that it’s the cause of the ache that’s building there.

It doesn’t take long for Frank to leave. When he does, David watches the car pull away and then switches back to the kitchen camera. Sarah is sitting at the marble island, gazing into her glass of wine. She’s still glowing, but it’s softer now.

David looks at his own skin and sees nothing.

It makes the decision to get blackout drunk even easier.

*

Frank comes back. David doesn’t even try to pretend he’s okay. He takes the offered enchiladas and then rests his head back on his crossed arms on the desk, half-looking at Frank.

"You know, I don’t- I don't blame you for kissing her,” he says, smushed into the crease where his arm meets his elbow. "She's a beautiful woman.”

Frank tries to say something, but David interrupts. “And I- I don't blame her, either. For reacting like that. I don’t.”

“Listen, David.” Frank looks just about as tense as David has ever seen him: arms folded, stood just inside the doorway and hunched like he wants to vanish into his hoodie. “I didn’t know that would happen. All right? And that- that was not for me to find out.”

“No,” David says, almost laughing. “It wasn’t.”

“And I know you’re really pissed at me right now and you wanna bite my head off or hit me or something, but you gotta know-“ Frank’s eyes are sincere. “I’d never do that to you.”

David appraises him for a moment. Then he reaches for the half-empty bottle. “C’mere,” he says, uncurling from his desk. He offers the whiskey to Frank. “Let’s forget.”

Frank takes him up on the offer and they gravitate over to the room with comfier places to drink themselves insensible. David throws himself down onto his camp bed, feeling slightly disconnected from the world as it swims around him. He sees Frank take a rather more measured seat, in his peripheral vision.

“You know what I miss, Frank?” David contemplates the ceiling and sighs. “I miss sex. Like- really, ridiculously badly.”

Frank chuckles and David shoots him a look. “ _Really._  Look, don’t tell me you’ve been off shacking up with a bunch of women and I’m the only one missing out.”

In the silence that follows, David figures out that he worded that very, very badly. “I mean, you must… miss it too, right?”

Frank takes a drink. “Yeah,” he says, after a beat. He shoots David a look right back. “And I haven’t.”

David stretches his arms straight out towards the ceiling, feeling his shoulders click. “Good, good. I mean, like I said, I understand why Sarah would do that. She married me, so she’s gotta have good taste in men."

Frank barks another laugh and shakes his head. “Keep dreaming, Lieberman. I don’t want your wife.”

“You kissed her back, though,” David says, thoughtfully. He rolls onto his side to see Frank better, propping his head up with his arm. “I don’t know, Frank. If someone I didn’t want kissed me, I’d be outta the door. I wouldn’t be _thanking_  them.”

Frank points a finger at him. “You’re seeing stuff that ain’t there.” When David just continues to look at him, Frank runs his hand over the back of his head and looks away. 

“I was… surprised, if I’m honest,” he says eventually. “I didn’t expect that.”

“The kiss or the part where you're her soulmate?”

Frank makes a face like he just crunched on a lemon. “C’mon, David.”

In response, David gets unsteadily to his feet and heads over, grabbing the bottle out of Frank’s hand. “Thanks,” he says, meaning the whiskey, and sits down at the end of Frank’s bed to take a generous swig.

“I know she’s not yours,” David says, after a moment of staring into space. “You didn’t light up.” He runs a hand through his hair and exhales. “I just- I thought it didn’t matter. Thought she would never find the one.”

Frank snorts. “That’s horseshit, you know? You married her. I’m not gonna fuck up your marriage.”

“You never know,” David says, glancing at him.

“I’m pro’lly never gonna date anyone ever again,” Frank says, bluntly. “So you can shut up with that nonsense.”

David turns to look at him, shocked into a bit of sobriety. He puts a hand on Frank’s ankle. _"Frank,"_  he says. 

Frank folds his arms and looks away, like he always does in response to kindness. “I don’t need your… pity, all right? Nobody needs my shit. Only person I was ever gonna have is dead.”

David holds out the whiskey instead of talking and Frank takes it, tipping it up and drinking a good mouthful. He looks upset and David’s anger at him for the day’s events wilts a little in the face of that.

“Hey,” David says, waiting until Frank meets his gaze again. “You can kiss Sarah if you want.”

Frank raises his eyebrows and he chokes a bit on the last swallow. _"What?"_  

“I mean it. You could use it.” David tips his head back, stretching his shoulders again. He’s _gotta_  improve his posture, he's full of aches. “I mean, if she wants to she wants to. We’re all adults.” He smiles as a thought occurs to him. “And probably all dying for it.”

“You should think about clearing your name before you start planning a threesome, David,” Frank says, sounding slightly more sheepish than his usual sarcasm.

David blinks, putting his hands on his knees and trying to focus. “That’s-“ He wants to say _not what I meant_ , but now the image is in his brain and he finds that it’s not a… terrible thought.

He tries to quash it, but the whiskey is interferring and he can _feel_  himself flush.

“Do you always flirt when you’re drunk?” Frank asks, back in more familiar needling-David territory.

David glares at him and it comes to his attention that Frank’s probably drunker than he’d let himself usually get. It’s not the spark in his eyes or the touch of red under his cheekbones, it’s the way he’s sitting there so loosely. Almost relaxed. That gives David some confidence.

“Only if it’s worth it,” he says, deliberately not taking his hand off Frank’s ankle. He meets Frank’s eyes. “Like I said, if I wasn’t attracted to someone I wouldn’t _thank_  them.”

Frank nods, making a ‘hmm’ sound in the back of his throat. “Right. You’d be out the door. That was it.”

“Yeah,” David says. Frank meets his eyes again and something in David - probably the whiskey - encourages him. “Frank, I gotta- I gotta tell you.“ 

He pushes himself up from the mattress and sways over, coming to rest against the cabinet beside Frank’s camp bed. Then he leans down, just enough to get in Frank’s space. “I’m not running.”

Frank looks up at him for a second with an expression that David can’t figure out- wait, no he can. That’s lust. Lust and drunkenness. He grabs David’s face before David even knows what’s happening and pulls him in, crushing their lips together in the kind of needy mess that only drunks can fully appreciate.

Frank’s mouth is hard on David’s and Frank’s mouth is hot. He tastes like whiskey and something sharper that’s all Frank. Whatever it is, it goes straight to David’s cock.

He lets his face be held and lowers his hands to find something sturdy: Frank’s shoulders. They will do. Even if there’s a hoodie between David’s palms and Frank’s skin.

Frank breaks away with a growl. “Lieberman,” he says, in a low voice. His eyes are dark. “You better not be fucking with me.”

David feels his knees shake and digs his fingers into Frank’s hoodie. “I’m not,” he says. He licks his lower lip. “I liked what you said.” 

When Frank doesn’t say anything back, David leans in and kisses Frank back with just as much vigour. Frank bites his lip in response and David hisses into his mouth.

He can’t say how or when it happens, but one minute they’re just making out and the next Frank’s hands are on David’s waist and - fuck he’s strong - David is being hoisted onto Frank’s lap, straddling him. David’s cock gives it a solid thumbs up.

“Fuck, Frank,” David breathes when he gets a minute, his lips already feeling bruised. Frank just stares back at him, mouth pink and pupils blown. His hands are still on David’s waist. “…Fuck,” David finishes. It’s all he can say.

He grabs the bottom of Frank’s hoodie and hauls it up instead, yanking it over Frank’s head with both hands. Frank’s wearing a tank top underneath - the one that doesn’t leave much to the imagination - and David runs his hands over Frank’s bare shoulders before he can stop himself.

The guy is built like a bodybuilder’s wet dream and David, despite having seen almost all of Frank when he was torn up and bloody and sexless, now sees his skin in a brand new light. David’s breathing hard and he wants that top off now too, but something makes him check in with Frank. 

Who hasn’t moved.

It takes him a moment and considerable restraint, but David presses his lips firmly together and stills his hands. “You okay, Frank?” he asks, his fingers brushing against the tops of Frank’s upper arms. “We don’t have to.”

Frank’s eyes are cast down between them, but David knows he isn’t staring at his erection. He’s fighting one of those internal wars with himself that he can’t seem to help starting.

“Listen,” David says, leaning in. He touches his fingertips to Frank’s cheek, feeling the buzz of stubble. Frank’s eyes close. “It’s been a while. I get it.” 

He watches the tension in Frank’s jaw twitch, drawing his fingertips down over the muscle. Frank shivers. “But if you’re desperate for a fuck,” David says, almost whispering now. “Fuck _me._  I might even like it."

Frank exhales through his teeth. “I can’t do that to you, David,” he says, tightly. His fingers let go of David’s waist and he doesn’t look up.

“Uh,” says David. He blinks and pulls away from Frank, lowering his hands. Only when he gets to his feet does Frank look at him again.

There are lines in Frank’s brow and creases in the corners of his mouth that weren’t there a minute ago. He’s still drunk and he wanted it - David’s _sure_  - but something changed his mind.

David reaches up to tug at the edges of his beard in distraction and a little distress. “Right. Uh. I’m-“ He points. “Gonna go to bed.”

Frank just nods and keeps looking at David like a deer that survived the first hit, but is now lying horribly wounded on the side of the road.

“Okay,” David says, and heads back to his own bed. He’s grateful for the whiskey then most of all: he doesn’t have time to hate himself before he falls asleep.

*

He wakes with a blinding headache and the strongest need to piss he’s ever had in his life. After cringing away from the overhead light and groaning, David forces himself to his feet and shuffles into the bathroom.

His plan is to take a handful of aspirin and go back to sleep, but when he comes back out he realises he can smell… breakfast.

Frank is sitting in the kitchen eating a bowl of rice. There’s another bowl out on the table opposite him. When David pauses in the hallway, Frank meets his eyes and indicates the bowl. “Eat,” he grunts. “You’ll feel better.”

David shuffles his way into the kitchen and sits down on a stool. His mind is swimming and his brain feels like it’s been pounded with a hammer, but somehow he’s a little bit hungry. It helps that whatever Frank’s made is fantastic.

“Probiotics,” Frank explains. “It’ll repair your gut. Drink this, too.” He pushes an open bottle of some mysterious dark liquid across the table.

David gets about four mouthfuls into the rice before he realises that Frank’s being way too nice to him.

He glances up. Frank is munching away on his own food and he could be interested in the kitchen counter. Or he could be avoiding looking at David. “Hey,” David says. Then: “Hey.”

Frank meets his gaze. A little reluctantly.

David pauses to think of the right words. “Thanks for being good to me,” he says, eventually, noticing Frank’s eyes flicker at the words. He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. “I know I can be the world’s biggest asshole sometimes and you got a lot going on. I just wanted to say, I’m sorry.”

Frank looks surprised. He’s still fighting that war inside himself, David can see, but maybe it’s not so fierce just now.

“I’m, uh- I’m not gonna blame it all on the alcohol. ‘Cause that’d be a lie.” David takes a sip of the mystery liquid to give himself a second to think and finds out that it’s actually quite sweet. “I just want you to know… before anything, you’re my friend, okay?”

Frank’s still wearing his surprised face and now he even looks a bit choked up. “Okay,” he says.

“That’s right.” David puts his drink back down. “We cool?”

Frank smiles a little. “We’re cool.”

David holds out his fist across the table and smiles when Frank bumps it with his knuckles. “Good,” he says, digging back into the rice. “Because I might need a liver transplant from you later."

*

David lets Frank go off to talk to Sarah about his son without complaining. Well, without complaining too much. The reluctance digging deep into his heart doesn’t go away though, especially when he turns on the cameras and sees just how upset Sarah is.

Something's happened. Something he missed.

Frank walks into shot and Sarah brings him a knife.

“I found this in Zach’s backpack,” she says, and David covers his face with his hands, forcing himself to breathe in deep, aching breaths.

It’s worse when he takes his hands away. Frank offers to talk to Zach and Sarah's relief manifests as a haze of light all across her arms. 

Frank says nothing. Sarah calls Zach downstairs and - thankfully - leaves them to it.

David lasts about as long as it takes for Zach to break down before he can’t stand there staring anymore. He knows who did this to his kid. To Sarah. _He_  did. And he can’t just sit on his hands and _watch_ his whole family break apart without doing anything anymore.

So, as he grabs his keys and unlocks the van, David misses Sarah calling Frank over, and he misses the look on Frank’s face when she tells him.

After being kicked back to the van, all David can do is sit in his seat and stew. He turns the radio on to some 80s rock station to try to drown out the sound of his kid having fun with his wife’s soulmate and wallows in his inability to be that man.

Frank knows he hasn’t left. He comes over and knocks on the window some time later, startling David from an uneasy sleep. David goes to open the door, but Frank is already talking. “Get out of here,” he’s saying, muffled by the glass. “Go.”

David blinks the sleep from his eyes, bites his tongue and starts the engine.

By the time Frank gets back to the powerplant, David is halfway into another bottle and protests with a long groan when Frank takes it away.

“Don’t,” Frank says, and “Don’t,” mocks David right back at him.

“Don’t, he says. Don’t kiss your wife. Don’t play with your kid. Don’t be a _father._ ” David throws the words like knives, because they’ve been digging into his skin since he lay down on the camp bed.

Has it really only taken one more day for him to decide to get blackout drunk again?

Frank puts the bottle on a table where David can’t reach it and sits down on the bed, next to David’s feet. He doesn’t say anything.

Last night, David would have teased him. He would have made a joke about it. But David has drunk more than he did last night - a lot more - and he doesn’t have in him to be funny anymore. “What?” he says. “Too real for you? If you wanted to take my place, you might as well've just said."

Frank’s hands ball into fists and that makes David chuckle. “Oh, here we go.” He pushes Frank with his foot to rile him up and Frank moves like lightning from the side of the bed to David’s chest, grabbing the neck of David’s t-shirt. 

He hauls David an inch or two off the mattress and shouts at him so loud that David cringes. “What do you _want_  me to do?!"

Frank’s hands are shaking and his face is twisted into some kind of tragic mask. Up close, David can see his scars, but the most vivid of all are the spots of red high on his cheeks and the whites of his eyes.

“Huh? You fucking tell me, David. I swear to god. Tell me what you want me to do and I’ll fucking do it.” 

Frank shakes his head, breathing harshly through his nose. Then he glances away. “I told Sarah. I told her, all right? She took me aside. Told me she saw it herself, in the wine glass. I tried to put her off, but she wouldn’t let up. Just like you.”

Frank shakes David once, hard. “You don’t get it, do you? You don’t get it, you stupid fucking analyst. Look at yourself.”

David stares up at Frank from the depths of his bitterness and guilt, even now feeling worse for doing this to Frank than how he'd felt earlier. He clears his throat, head still hanging back onto the pillow. “What will I see?”

Frank responds by dropping him onto the mattress and grabbing his arm, ignoring David’s protests and shoving it into his face.

“Frank- stop it- I can’t see.”

“He gets it,” Frank says, like David’s the dumbest person in the world, and David’s eyes finally focus on his arm. Or rather, on the blinding light coming out of it.

“You’re-“ David says. 

He slowly lowers his arm, staring at Frank. “You’re-“

“Don’t say it.” Frank looks tired - really tired.

Shaking his head, David pushes himself upright. He raises at his hands and looks at them. Confirming.

Then he looks back at Frank.

In the light pouring off of David, Frank looks overexposed, like an old faded photograph. The shadows are longer under his eyes and the bruises darker. His skin is not shining back.

“What a fucking mess,” Frank says. He gets to his feet and heads over to his bed, grabbing the alcohol on the way. Then he curls up on his side facing away from David and doesn’t speak again.

David just stares at his arms. Stares until they dim. Until they turn back into the pale shade of skin that he recognises.

_ Shit. _

*

David doesn’t see Frank again for two days. Two days of unfolding allegations on the news. Two days of wondering whether Frank’s still alive. Two days of wondering - if he is - whether he will come back here and what state he'll be in if he does.

When Frank appears in the basement, covered in blood and wounds, David can hardly believe it.

The Frank that snaps at him when he tries to help, who pushes him away and blames him: that’s more believable.

“I did it for _you,_ ” David says. “Because you won’t stop until you die.”

“You don’t get to make that decision,” Frank throws back. “You? Me? This place? That ended when you _did._ "

He takes a towel off the sink and goes.

The next few days pass in a blur. First, David meets Leo again. He hugs her so tight that the year doesn't matter anymore. Then, he sees Zach and Sarah.

He almost bottles it there and then, but Frank- the Frank who has dropped all mention of the S word and has dedicated himself to dying a satisfying death, helps him to keep going. The fake shooting works perfectly. Rawlins’ men take Frank with them and leave David in the street.

David gets out of a body bag and goes to meet his family again.

He wants so badly to be with them forever. He wants to leave New York with his wife and children and never come back.

He wants desperately to stay.

In the end, he excuses himself from Homeland’s spare room and hovers outside Madani’s office. When she invites him in, he tells her what he shouldn’t: what he promised he would never do again.

He betrays Frank Castle, because David can’t bear to hang back and watch someone hurt all alone ever again. He betrays him because Frank is so much more than he believes himself to be and David seems to be the only one that knows. He betrays him because, despite what he thinks about the life that's left to him, Frank doesn’t deserve to die.

He has never seen anything so beautiful as the rise and fall of Frank’s chest, or the wild, devastatingly relieved look in his eyes.

*

He tells Sarah in the hotel room. When they’re lying sated in each other’s arms, touching skin to skin for the first time in what seems like forever.

“Both of us.” Sarah shifts her head until it’s pillowed on David’s shoulder. “What do you think it means?"

David’s arm is around her neck and resting on her breastbone, but he’s far away. Wondering where Frank has gone. In answer to that question, he just sighs. It’s only later - much later - that he comes clean.

_ I think we’re the only ones he’s got. _

_ I think he’s too broken for just one person to hold. _

_ I just want him to be happy. _

He sees Frank again, before he confesses, and he fails to bring him in to join them for Thanksgiving dinner.

“I get it,” he says, trying not to address the torrent of dread and excitement in his stomach. Trying to miss the way the light in here is too bright for an overcast morning. “It’s too soon.”

“Too soon,” Frank echoes, and gives him a heartbreaking smile.

David smiles back, then gets out of the car before he can’t.

*

It takes eight months for Frank to show up on their doorstep, bloody and broken again. He almost runs when David opens the door, but comes inside when Sarah appears at David's elbow and asks him to stay.

Frank doesn’t seem to want to talk, so instead Sarah and David take care of him.

They run a bath. Frank, somewhere much further away, doesn’t protest when they wash the dirt and sweat from his skin. He doesn’t stop David from stitching a leaking hole in his arm. He closes his eyes when Sarah - very gently - runs a comb through his hair.

The water swirls down the pipe and takes all the grime away.

Sarah takes his hand and guides him out of the tub. David takes a towel off the rack and wraps it around Frank’s body for him, enveloping him in a warm, soft embrace.

He follows them down the hall like he’s done all of this before.

It’s not sex: not really. Sure, they move past kissing this time and David spends what feels like hours finding the places that make Frank respond, but it’s careful. Caring. Nothing’s rushed. Nothing has to be done.

Sarah kisses Frank’s eyes when they close and he moves himself slowly inside of her.

Frank’s heartbeat is strong beneath their fingers. Frank breathes fast and deep. David and Sarah entwine their hands with his, seeking his release.

It comes quicker than either of them imagined, as if, after locking it all up so well, Frank forgot that he gave them a key.

They fall asleep like that: nestled three as one beneath the sheets. In the morning, David wakes on his back in the middle with both of them tucked in his arms.

“David,” Frank says at last, in a voice that sounds rough and unused.

His heart skips several beats. “Yeah, Frank?” he says. Sarah stirs against his side and David squeezes her close.

Frank doesn’t move in any way that David can see, but he seems to sink deeper into the arm around his shoulders and his voice vibrates against David’s skin. “Thank you."

David glances down and sees Sarah looking up at him, tears shining in her eyes. Both of them are glowing like stars next to Frank.

He takes a breath that catches somewhere in his chest. “That’s all right, Frank,” he says, feeling the warmth of Frank’s skin against his own. He takes another breath and smiles. “It’s all right."


End file.
